Bourbaki Panorama

My friend Ken Hollings, author of Welcome to Mars, recently visited the Bourbaki Panorama in Luzern, Switzerland. Panoramas are something like an analog predecessor to iMax and virtual reality. Painted in 1881, the 1,000 square meter Bourbaki Panorama painting was later augmented with mannequins and props to enhance the immersion experience. Ken writes:

I recently returned from a brief lecture tour of Switzerland, during the course of which I was taken to the Bourbaki Panorama while in Lucerne: an amazing reconstruction of the French army's demoralized retreat across the Swiss border after being defeated and demobilized by the Germans in 1871 - Bourbaki is the name of the French army's commander who made an unsuccessful attempt to commit suicide rather than live with the shame - the Panorama is located at the top of large purpose-built roundhouse near the lake and features dozens of wax figures set against a painted backdrop... there aren't a lot of pix of it on the web, and you're not allowed to take photographs while you're in there, but this attached one (click image to enlarge) gives you a good idea of how it's put together. The use of telegraph wires and train tracks, cattle cars etc to suggest shifts in distance and dimension is particularly skillful.

For more on the Bourbaki Panorama, see this 2003 article in VRMag by Michelle Bienias: 19th Century Bourbaki Panorama

UPDATE: For those in the U.S. seeking a more local variant on the Panorama, BB pal Jason Weisberger points us to the Gettysburg Cyclorama, completed in 1884.

• [frankieboy]

  The Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC has one, of the Gardens of Versailles. It was painted in the early 19th century. It is on a giant roll of canvas, that was brought on tour around the country. The canvas would be unrolled, and set up in a big circle, probably inside of a large building, like an armory or something, and then paying customers would go ‘inside’ of it, and marvel at the illusion of actually being at Versailles. Can you imagine that? Not even two hundred years ago!

• [jimkirk]

  This reminds me of a story I read a long time ago. As I recall, it was about sections of panoramas found along the Mississippi river. Very detailed, when magnified you could see the cell structure of the plants. Turned out they were giant film strips left by aliens cataloging the planet. Can anyone identify this? Might have been by Theodore Sturgeon…

• [floridaman]

  There is an Amish Cyclorama in Berlin (Ohio) that depicts Anabaptist history:
  http://www.behalt.com/

• [Takuan]

  really? got an URL?

• [Anonymous]

  Jeff Wall made one image there.

• [generousmedium]

  The restoration of the bourbaki panorama is also the subject of one of Jeff Wall’s photographs which you can see here among other places:
  http://www.platypus1917.org/archive/article67/

• [Ugly Canuck]

  Ah I once saw something similar, as a kid visiting the tourist area of old Quebec City, a diorama of “The Battle of the Plains of Abraham + The Death of Wolfe” IIRC. Don’t know if it still exists, it may have burnt or have been sold or dismantled.
  I do like this “diorama/panorama/you are there” technique of presentation, though.

• [Anonymous]

  Sigh… has even the IMAX experience been colonized by Apple now? I was genuinely confused for a moment there.

• [pilcrow]

  The article states “Bourbaki is the name of the French army’s commander who made an unsuccessful attempt to commit suicide rather than live with the shame.” Unsuccessful. So, the French commander couldn’t kill himself, much less the enemy. Just another milestone in France’s long history of military embarrassments.

• [Shelby Davis]

  @ Jimkirk 14:

  That would be Google.

• [Shelby Davis]

  I remember seeing things like this at the war museum in Korea. Some of them even had mannequins of different sizes, suspended airplanes, etc, and if you stood in the right place, it was actually difficult to tell where the 3d parts ended and the painting began. Very cool.

• [petereraymond]

  I love this, almost no technology except lighting and possibly sound. Allows your mind to fill in the gaps. Truly immersive experiences are rare and often poorly executed. I designed them over the years and it is a wonderful challenge.

  Peter E Raymond
  

  • [Antinous]

    petereraymond,

    You can put your URL on your profile page. Thanks.

• [leriseux]

  There’s also a Panorama in Waterloo, Belgium

  http://www.flickr.com/photos/rqz18/2489579008/

• [silkox]

  These were a big deal in the late 1800′s in Europe and the US. They were called cycloramas. There’s one in Atlanta, GA that shows a moment of the Battle of Atlanta, and another — newly renovated and reopened — in Gettysburg, showing Pickett’s Charge.

• [Takuan]

  I thought cycloramas were painted canvas rolls that were scrolled for audiences?

  Anyways, a good use for the secret tunnel under London up for sale.

• [skramble]

  And for those in Los Angeles, there is the Velaslavay Panorama, near Downtown.

  If you are in the area, its worth checking out.

• [Stuart Ellis]

  There’s a Civil War Cyclorama in Atlanta.

  http://www.atlantacyclorama.org/

• [Cupcake Faerie]

  “Bourbaki is the name of the French army’s commander who made an unsuccessful attempt to commit suicide rather than live with the shame.”

  Sadly, he did not live to see the mathematical movement that bears his name ( in French absurdest fashion ), that gave us the “new math” in the 60s, but also some of the greatest mathematicians that walked the face of the earth (A. Weil, J. P. Serre, A. Grothendieck, A. Connes )

  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Bourbaki)

  The French have always made better mathematicians than warriors, with the exceptions of Charlemagne, Joan of Arc, and Napoleon.

• [Frank W]

  I wouldn’t know how many of these nineteenth-century panoramas have survived, but in The Hague, in the Netherlands, there’s Panorama Mesdag. Named after its painter, Hendrik Willem Mesdag. Also of 1881, but thankfully not on a military theme. It depicts the fishing town Scheveningen and the beach as it was back then.

• [Takuan]

  anyone done Koom Valley yet?

• [cyphill]

  Don’t the forget the Waterloo Panorama. What is at about famous defeats that makes people want to paint panoramas?